How School Communities Can Help Redefine Accountability Assessment.

Abstract

We had better be sure, the authors point out, that assessments for accountability are congruent with our goals and aspirations for students and with what we know to be critical components of successful change and meaningful educational improvement - especially the recognition that teachers are at the center of such change and improvement. A movement is under way in the United States to make new assessments powerful levers for school improvement, restructuring, and accountability. While there is wide agreement that new state- or federally initiated external assessments will drive instruction, many question whether they will automatically drive it in good directions.(1) Traditionally, overreliance on single scores has made external accountability assessments problematic. For example, in many cases teachers have been compelled to teach to the test, causing other important aspects of the curriculum to be crowded out.(2) We are concerned that the same problems may occur if new assessments are applied as external accountability measures, even if these new assessments are considered to be superior to existing instruments. In this article, we suggest some of the dangers posed by external assessments; especially those designed for accountability purposes. We argue that the primary condition for effective assessment is that teachers, principals, and the community - rather than a district, state, or the federal government - be at the center of the assessment enterprise. The true power of new assessment methods will emanate from agreements at the school level concerning goals and standards and the assessments that best measure them. Furthermore, as Linda Darling-Hammond and Jacqueline Ancess suggest, this school-level approach (as seen at Central Park East and elsewhere) gives members of the school community the opportunity to make sure that assessment strategies complement instructional goals and activities.(3) Our experiences in the Urban District Assessment Consortium - a collaborative effort between the Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation, and Educational Policy at Boston College and 11 urban school districts - have confirmed that accountability assessments must begin at the school level. We will share these experiences and suggest how a dialogue about assessment can contribute to genuine educational improvement. Dangers Inherent in the Current Approach to Accountability as the term is used today refers to the belief that teachers and schools should answer to the public for the academic achievement of students. Indicators are used to represent what and how much students have learned. Following this line of reasoning, it makes perfect sense to design assessments that can be used to measure student outcomes and to infer teacher and school competence from these reported outcomes. Consequently, accountability becomes operational through the administration of tests that serve as mechanisms to audit the performance of teachers and schools. There are two readily identifiable problems with this seemingly rational approach to evaluating schools. First, there are unintentional negative consequences. When external examinations are perceived as high-stakes tests, teachers and administrators naturally take them quite seriously.(4) Based on our experiences, teachers make instructional decisions and spend a significant amount of class time preparing for these exams instead of focusing on instructional content and objectives. In some cases, this use of class time is not only sanctioned by the principal but actually promoted. However, since the content of these exams is more than likely out of synch with the ongoing curriculum and the school's goals, the tests do not represent meaningful outcomes for either teachers or students. This situation negatively affects teachers(5) and is of special concern in schools with large numbers of minority students.(6) We have found that the reported results of these tests also fail to provide the kind of information that can help teachers improve instructional strategies or help the schools make needed organizational changes. …

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